Aug 28
WORDY.
You know, we aren’t negative about our YOG. We just can’t be bothered.
What we are currently facing, is the product of a decade of spoon fed, controlled and manufactured growth with our sports identity. Gone were the hay days of Fandi Ahmad and the Singapore Lions, gone is the pride of a nation into sports. A complete lack of publicity by the local media is a partial blame, but the problems are that when you dig deep into our Table Tennis wins, and roughly every win or achievement we had, it was held by foreigners. What really contributes to the apathy is purely from how the current generation grew, and how the previous generation wasn’t breed (or groomed by local media) to feel pride of a win by a foreign ‘devil’. Is it racist?
No. Read on for why.
Should we have a problem with that? Is it racist to not support a foreign alien playing for our nation of Singapore? Well my thesis is that its unintentional, and a flock theory that worked pretty well with segregation of our local races already.
Notice how Little India, Bedok, Kampong Glam and Chinatown, even the heartlands like Serangoon, Chua Chu Kang and Tampines seemingly have a certain disparity, a concentration of a certain race. It is not racist, it is just human nature that we rather mix with the same race, because it benefits ecologically and socially; people tend to mix with people who share the same language, skin color or ideology. To force people to mix, in the end would show very little result as people would just find others of the same race and merge back into the populous. Citing just 5-10 articles of inter-racial marriages does nothing to contend with the fact that you have more friends of the same race than of the other races. In blunt terms, if you are Chinese, you probably have a lot more Chinese friends than Malay or Indians, and your probability of befriending or marrying a Chinese is more likely than with another race; do you feel comfortable adapting to your spouse’s different religion, even if it means to modify your schedule or change certain customs?
To put this into context of foreign nationals playing for us; by the mere mention of “foreign”, we already associated ourselves to be inadequate and not as skilled as them, because of merely the attitude that there is not enough news of real, Singapore-made Singaporeans that are achieving like them. The lack of balance in reporting of these people have made us sub-consciously not want to support them. If you knew that Mr. X is a Singaporean and plays Olympic bowling, tendency is that you rather support him, rather than Mrs. Y, a Chinese National playing for Singapore, who plays a mean game of Basketball. The politically correct behavior is to cite me unfair, and that you would vehemently support either because they are playing for Singapore. But would you?
We do politically correctly say yes, they are athletes of a different nation playing for us, but the manufactured wins and pride and over-dependence on Singapore’s Pro-Foreigner policy have reared a slight contempt among locals: Do we support these people who have made it harder and more competitive on local soil? Why should I support someone who can take my job away? Even if the youths aren’t foreigners in the ultimate end, living in a world described above, makes most of us cynics.
Now comes my point about how we are grown and breed. Lesser and lesser Singaporeans (especially youths) are being told to dream of being a sport star, and to dream of money and surviving. A 1st World Country, have citizens thinking nothing but money, rather than personal freedom. Our Education is an awesome path of drilling that Human Resource in Singapore is important, and that language is the only way of getting into a good school for another certificate, or Maths and Science is absolute and imperative for further studies into a College of your choice. Where is the celebration and glory of victories of Singapore? Why are the people, last minute forced into cohering into supporting the YOG? Why are students suddenly forced and recruited into support? Its a “Red” ideology common in Communist History, that people are forced to be happy for the state, and as much as I find Communism to be one step away from the Common Utopia, history in textbooks have taught us that Communism didn’t work because in the end people want personal freedoms; And though Singapore does have some personal freedom over your own finances, and that the true blood volunteers are trying their very best to make this international event a success, the sad apathetic majority just doesn’t care, and is educated enough to see through this horrible attempt to marshal support.
Don’t get me wrong, a quick glance at my Facebook shows that a number of people ARE interested in YOG, and most of them are genuinely keen on supporting whatever soccer team and blah that Singapore has. What I’m talking about are the “volunteers” forced by local control, with unnecessary and dystopia-like handling of our human resource, a generation of manufactured growth does not behave as spontaneously as one might expect. The government wanted to put its hands and feet into every single aspect of our lives to make it more desirable and comfortable, but to indirectly punish us for having dreams that do not contribute to the economy with NS taking away most of the local talent, rising cost of living causing us logicians to stop thinking about dreams and more about money and papers; Getting businessmen and bussinesswomen to rise up with fist punching into the greater sky, shouting and cheering for a bunch of sweaty sport-type of people, is going to be leading the horse to water, shot it in the head, and dip its limp mouth into water, and telling it to drink.
But probably the nails for the coffin comes from the utter lack of support of the local media. Read back the years and look for any time it reported about local athletes winning anything other than boating (somehow dragon boating is a popular sport in Singapore on light researching) and you can tell the contrast immediately. Again, citing just a few articles won’t change the fact that for the rest of the years local media have not publicized sports at all, unless it is the S. League for betters and whatever European-based Football League for TV networks. And now when the YOG comes rolling around, again, even the few weeks before it started there was almost zero support of the athletes preparing for the events, and only when it starts, suddenly all focus is on them athletes whose name I can’t bloody name at all because of poor, rushed, and not-publicized-enough reporting.
All these come together to form a pool of mostly apathetic, but a more aptly description would be that we were breed to not bother. And before I pin the blame on the government, question yourself: Is YOG a government-sponsored, or government run? Are you the slightest bit embarrassed of the empty seats, or are you bemused or disappointed?
Had we have the chance to dream, and not having the greater good to keep telling us that our favorite color is red, we could’ve made an excellent baseball club.
